Sheldon Russell to receive Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award
March 24, 2023
Authors, poets, book illustrators, designers, and photographers from across the state and the nation have been selected as finalists for the 2023 Oklahoma Book Awards. Woods County author Sheldon Russell will be honored with the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award. Russell is the author of 15 books, including his award-winning historical fiction novels and his popular Hook Runyon mystery series.
Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush won the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction in 2007; and was selected by the Oklahoma Commemoration Commission as an Official Centennial Project, and the Langum Project for Historical Literature. A number of finalist nominations have also been awarded over the course of his writing career. In 2022 Russell's novel, A Forgotten Evil, won the Spur Award for Best Historical Western from the Western Writers of America.
Russell's books have earned starred reviews from both Book List and Publisher's Weekly. The Insane Train was selected as one of the six best mysteries of 2010 by Publisher's Weekly. The Bridge Troll Murders won the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction in 2018 and was chosen for the Librarian-Nominated Longlist for the Dublin Literary Award in 2019. His psychological suspense novel, A Particular Madness, has been nominated for the 2023 award. Two new novels, Justice Rode the Train and Listen are scheduled for release in 2023.
Russell is a graduate of Northwestern Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma State University. He taught graduate school at the University of Louisville and the University of Central Oklahoma, where he retired as Professor Emeritus in 2000.
Nancy, his wife of fifty-nine years, is a talented sculptor in her own right. They have one daughter Shonda who works at the Alva Public Library. The Russells currently live on the family ranch in the beautiful Gloss Mountains of northwestern Oklahoma.
The thirty-fourth Annual Oklahoma Book Awards will take place on April 22, 2023, where winners in each category will be announced. The banquet will take place at the Embassy Suites Hotel ballroom, located at 741 N Phillips Avenue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Thirty-six books were selected as finalists from a record 210 entries in the following categories: children/young adult, design/illustration, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
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